"Flattening" a video

Most of the corporate promotion videos I see are enhanced presentations: text movements with animations, still images with slow zoom added, piano background music and maybe some custom made illustrations. They look good, but have 2 problems when it comes to pitches to busy people:

They take too much time: like a bullet point chart, you will have read that one sentence 10x by the time the pianist is finished with the 8 bar melody and ready to move on to the next shot.

That is the reason why I often "flatten" these videos, take the 5 best screen shots and paste them as images in a regular presentation deck. Looks great, quick to read, easy to download.

Anticipating this issue, when you brief a video production company ask them for 2 versions of the video, one with all the graphical elements, and one with less text, so you can use it as source material for still images over which you can place your own text in a presentation. Also handy when your messages change over time.

There are many other situations where you might actually need to keep the video in its full size: demonstrations of products, interviews of people, etc. If it is just about adding drama to a still visual, why not go with a well designed still visual though.

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